By Aidan Joly
1,171 days before the UConn Huskies cut down the nets in Houston after winning the national championship with a 76-59 win against San Diego State, UConn lost a game to Villanova, 61-55 on January 18, 2020.
Dan Hurley was in his second season rebuilding the Huskies and it was against a program not far removed from its second national title in three seasons. Hardly a disgraceful loss.
However, a quote in the postgame press conference that day became his legacy: “People better get us now. That’s all. You better get us now, because it… it’s coming.” It was a quote that made the rounds on social media and became more and more popular over time as UConn got better and better.
It was, in fact, coming. Just over three years later, Hurley delivered the program’s fifth national championship since 1999, the most of any program since then, in one of the most dominant tournament runs we have ever seen.
It was debatable when the Huskies reached the Final Four, but you can’t deny it anymore: a new blueblood has arrived. Connecticut now has as many national titles as Duke and Indiana, and passed Kansas on Monday night. It has more than Villanova, Louisville and Michigan State. Only three programs in the country have more that five titles: UCLA (11), Kentucky (8) and North Carolina (6). It has won titles with three different head coaches and three different iterations of conferences. It is 5-0 in national title games all time. No program has a better record on this stage.
If winning it wasn’t enough, take a look at the path of destruction that the Huskies left behind. It won each of its six tournament games by double digits and won them by an average of 20 points. It trailed for a grand total of 55 seconds in 120 second half minutes against Iona, Saint Mary’s, Arkansas, Gonzaga, Miami and San Diego State. An outrageous stat.
After the Aztecs got out to a 10-6 lead to start the night, UConn asserted itself one last time. It forced the Aztecs into 14 straight misses, a field goal drought that lasted 11 minutes. Tristen Newton was great at point guard, finishing with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Big man Adama Sanogo, its stalwart all tournament, finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Jordan Hawkins had 16 points after dealing with an illness over the weekend.
It did what it had done all year on Monday night. If not for a strange 2-6 stretch midway through the season, the Huskies, which finished 31-8, might go down as one of the best teams in the past quarter century. Maybe it still does. There was a narrative all season that there were no great teams, but the Huskies proved that wrong. They were a great team. They had everything you want in a champion – aggressive, fast, big, defensive-minded, opportunistic on offense, and most importantly, never let the moment get too big.
UConn is all the way back, winning its first national title since 2014. It belongs among the best, like how it was in the 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s, and now the 2020s. Four decades right there.
With Hurley at the helm, there’s more coming. And people got them now. As a blueblood program.
AJ Hoops 